After eight years of legal wrangling, the Greatest Show on Earth – and its owner, Ringling Bros. – head to Washington federal court Monday to answer charges from animal-rights groups that it beats its Asian elephants.

The ASPCA, three other pro-animal groups and a former Ringling employee have filed a suit charging that circus workers routinely hit the elephants with a bull hook – a club with a sharp, pointed hook – while training and disciplining them.

“Most people don’t realize an elephant’s skin is very sensitive, especially behind the ears where trainers are usually striking them. We have evidence that the elephants will bleed,” said Tracy Silverman, general counsel of the Animal Welfare Institute of Alexandria, Va., one of the four groups.

The suit, filed in June 2000, also contends that Ringling employees forcibly remove baby elephants from their mothers with ropes and chains before they are weaned. And it claims that elephants are kept chained for up to 100 hours while being moved in train cars. All these actions violate the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the suit says.

Ringling’s parent company, Feld Entertainment, denied the charges.

“Animal special-interest groups are distorting the facts by making false allegations about the treatment of Ringling Bros. elephants as part of a long-running crusade to eliminate animals from circuses, zoos and wildlife parks,” said Feld lawyer Michelle Pardo.

The suit was filed a year after Benjamin, a 4-year-old Ringling elephant, died in a pond in Huntsville, Texas.

Benjamin was swimming when his trainer motioned for him to get out.

When he disobeyed, the trainer came at him with a bull hook and the elephant died of a heart attack, Silverman said.

A US Department of Agriculture investigator determined that the use of the bull hook “precipitated in the physical harm and ultimate death” of the animal, the activist said.

Tom Rider, the former Ringling employee who joined the suit, worked for the circus from 1997 to 1999, feeding and taking care of the elephants. He said his conscience forced him to quit.

“I saw numerous beatings, hitting with the bull hook and constantly chaining them up all the time,” Rider told ABCNews.com.

“I left on my own,” he said. “I left because of the abuse of the animals.”

Meanwhile, the animal-rights group PETA has offered to buy Ringling a high-tech robotic pachyderm if it retires its elephants.